Co-Stars Who Secretly Dated During Production

This article contains a discussion of domestic violence.

If you're not familiar with the casual term "showmance," it refers to a romance that arises when two actors work together on a project ... and it happens quite a lot, actually. It does make sense, though, that exceptionally beautiful people — who spend hours in makeup trailers and perhaps become even more beautiful before they start filming — who spend hours upon hours with each other making a movie or TV show might fall in love. Especially if these hypothetical actors in question are working on a lengthy TV show or perhaps a film franchise, it's pretty normal for them to end up pursuing relationships with each other thanks to long hours, full immersion in the project, and undeniable sparks, especially if — as is the case in quite a lot of the examples that follow, with a few exceptions — the characters are dating within the narrative, giving the actors an opportunity to get paid to kiss one another.

Dating on set has to be complicated, right? What if you break up and start ruining takes — or what if you break up during an early season of a long-running TV show and are then forced into each other's presence day after day? Worse still, what if you break up and still have to play a couple on-screen? Some of the couples on this list are, as of this writing, still together, while others have parted ways ... but still, let's talk about co-stars who secretly dated each other during their various productions.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" certainly doesn't seem like a show that would spark romance-on set, largely because Rob Mac's long-running series is about five unrepentant dirtbags — Ronald "Mac" McDonald (Mac), Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton), his twin sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson), their dad Frank (Danny DeVito), and Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) — operating a bar somewhere in Philadelphia. The "gang," as the show calls them, literally never learn any lessons or evolve in any way, so it feels particularly funny that Mac and Olson fell in love on set ... and kept it a secret from their castmates.

As Olson revealed in a Variety feature on the successful couple in May 2025, the two started flirting — and before long, she was struggling with feelings despite the fact that Mac didn't seem to return them, and the fact that he wasn't typically her type. "I was finding myself on set, being in love with someone secretly, and thinking, 'This is bad,'" Olson said. "I wasn't just attracted to him anymore. I quickly fell very hard in love with him."

Howerton, as it happens, also chimed in, recalling that he was slightly horrified when Mac filled him in on the situation. Once he got over his fears that it would interfere with the show, he accepted it. "They're two incredibly funny, very attractive people," Howerton mused. "So I guess it didn't surprise me all that much, and I'm so glad it worked out." It certainly seems like all's well that ends well here, no matter how much Mac calls Dee a "stupid bird" on the show.

"Gossip Girl," the series created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage that's loosely based on the series of young adult novels by Cecily von Ziegesar, produced several stars after it premiered in 2007 — including Blake Lively and Penn Badgley. As socialite Serena van der Woodsen and "outsider" Dan Humphrey (though we should note that he's an outsider who lives in a sprawling loft in a wildly expensive Brooklyn neighborhood rather than the Upper East Side), these two actors played scenes where their characters got together, broke up, got together, and broke up. As it turns out, Lively and Badgley were dating in real life, but kept their split a total secret.

In an oral history of the show in Vanity Fair in 2017 (marking its tenth anniversary), executive producer and eventual showrunner Josh Safran revealed that Lively and Badgley's breakup came as a surprise. "The shocking thing was, I found out on the set of the Season 2 finale that Blake and Penn had broken up months before," Safran mused. "They kept the breakup hidden from the crew, which you could never do now. I don't even know how they did it. They kept it from everybody which is a testament to how good they are as actors. Because they did not want their personal drama to relate to the show."

As for Lively, she says they didn't spill the beans to stay professional. "Stepping back from it, I can see it," she mused. "But I remember there was one point where we were just afraid of how our personal lives overlapping our work life could be perceived by our bosses." The two split in 2010, with Badgley ultimately marrying Domino Kirke and starting a family and Lively doing the same with "Deadpool" superstar Ryan Reynolds.

Anyone who's ever watched "The Big Bang Theory" knows that Leonard and Penny Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco) are endgame the whole time, and for a little while, Galecki and Cuoco may have thought they were meant to be just like their characters. According to "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series" by Jessica Radloff, the co-stars kept their relationship quiet on set, especially from their showrunner Chuck Lorre ... until Cuoco decided to spill the beans.

As Cuoco recalled in the book, while the cast attended their first Comic-Con, the two snuck into each others' hotel rooms each night; Galecki confirmed, saying, "And it was still so new that we hadn't told the rest of the cast that we were dating yet, and here they were our closest friends." Cuoco then spontaneously told Lorre what was going on while the two were innocently talking during the massive convention.

Lore told Radloff that he and Cuoco were on a shuttle bus chatting and she admitted she was "seeing Johnny," and at first, he panicked about the fate of the show. Then he reversed course and congratulated her. "And as it turns out, obviously, they handled their relationship with such dignity and grace, and there was never a concern," he concluded, and the two split in 2010.

Throughout the mega-successful run of the "Twilight" saga — based on the best-selling novel series by Stephenie Meyer — rumors swirled that the franchise's stars, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, might be falling for each other in real life as well ... and those rumors only intensified after Stewart and her boyfriend Michael Angarano split in 2009. In the films, Stewart plays naïve teenager Bella Swan — who, in the story, falls in love with Robert Pattinson's centuries-old vampire Edward Cullen, and their relationship is essentially the focus of the entire series. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between Stewart and Pattinson became a massive deal as well, serving as tabloid fodder across the world. As far as the "secret" part goes, the two remained very tight-lipped about their union throughout the release of the films.

Sadly, this entire situation ended in heartbreak after Stewart's highly publicized affair with Rupert Sanders, the director of her 2012 film "Snow White and the Huntsman" — and though she and Pattinson did reconcile, they split for good in 2013 when Pattinson was photographed moving his things out of Stewart's house. Stewart is, as of 2025, married to screenwriter Dylan Meyer, and Pattinson has one child with his fiancée, actress and singer Suki Waterhouse ... but apparently, the former "Twilight" couple are still friends.

Okay, this one is pretty sad, so ... prepare yourself. Despite playing brother and sister in the seminal John Hughes movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey — who play the titular Ferris and his resentful sister Jeannie — started dating while making the beloved film. In Grey's memoir "Out of the Corner" (via Business Insider), Grey recalled of their on-set fling,, "I was as surprised as anyone when our relationship morphed from on-screen sibling rivalry to off-screen illicit romance." In fact, Broderick was dating somebody else at the time, whom Grey doesn't name, but after Grey confessed her love for him in the midst of their secret affair, Broderick then ended his relationship with this other woman. ""I realized I was in love with Matthew and told him I couldn't see him anymore. He promptly broke up with his 'close family friend' and we were together," Grey wrote. "Matthew just felt like my guy. He felt like home."

This relationship ended in a shocking tragedy. In 1987, Grey and Broderick were driving in Ireland when Broderick made a wrong turn and hit another car; the mother and daughter in said other car both died. Grey and Broderick ultimately split; Grey married Marvel Cinematic Universe Clark Gregg in 2001 and the two divorced in 2021, and Broderick has been married to Sarah Jessica Parker since 1997.

Generations ago, tabloids focused on the dramatic love triangle between Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and Elizabeth Taylor ... and decades later, a similar situation arose between Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt. Despite strenously denying that any attraction arose between them on the set of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," let alone a full-blown affair, Pitt and Jolie certainly seemed like they were enjoying a romance despite Pitt's high-profile marriage to "Friends" darling Aniston, and it turned out to be completely true; in 2006, a year after their movie released, Pitt and Jolie confirmed that they were expecting a baby (via People).

Pitt and Jolie, dubbed "Brangelina," wed in 2014 after many years together but ultimately began divorce proceedings in 2016, and in 2022, Jolie made some dark allegations against Pitt concerning domestic abuse against both her and her children aboard a private jet (per the New York Times), saying that the events in question happened in 2016 (which does honestly fit with the timeline of their split). As of 2026, neither has remarried, but both remain industry titans; Jolie is an activist who works as a special envoy for the United Nations, and Pitt won an Academy Award for his supporting turn in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" in early 2020.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

In 2016, as the reboot series "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" headed to Netflix, Life & Style Magazine got an exclusive scoop: star Alexis Bledel and the actor who played one of her on-screen paramours, "Supernatural" star Jared Padalecki, actually dated during filming, and nobody ever found out about it. Mara Casey, one of the costume designers on "Gilmore Girls," told the outlet, "We did have a joke about casting all of Alexis' [real-life] boyfriends. She dated Jared and Milo [Ventimiglia]." Wait, what?!

To back up, Bledel plays the precocious Lorelai "Rory" Gilmore throughout the series and reboot — alongside Lauren Graham, who plays her quirky, fast-talking young mom Lorelai Gilmore — and Padalecki plays Dean Forester, Rory's sweet albeit dopey first boyfriend. Bledel's relationship with Ventimiglia was public knowledge, but before this revelation in 2016, nobody knew that Bledel and Padalecki — who date three times on-screen throughout the series before Rory moves on and dates Jess Mariano (Ventimiglia) and, eventually, the wealthy and dashing Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry) — ever dated at all. Congratulations to these two crazy kids; they successfully kept this secret from millions of intense "Gilmore Girls" fans for over a decade, apparently! As of this writing, Padalecki has been married to his "Supernatural" co-star Genevieve Cortese since 2010, while Bledel wed her "Mad Men" co-star Vincent Kartheiser in 2014, and the couple parted ways in 2022.

After "Hannah Montana," Miley Cyrus continued acting in family-friendly projects, including the 2010 film "The Last Song" — which is where she met her future husband Liam Hemsworth. The film, based on a weepy novel by Nicholas Sparks, casts Cyrus as rebellious teenager Veronica (who goes by Ronnie) and Hemsworth as Will, a boy whom Ronnie meets in a small beach town while she's spending her summer with her estranged and, as it turns out, dying father Steve (Greg Kinnear). As we all know by now, sparks flew between Cyrus and Hemsworth on set, and the two started quietly dating.

Before long, the relationship that began on the set of "The Last Song" became front-page news, and though the two got engaged in 2012, they split (for the first time) in 2014. Two years later, the two lovers reconnected and got back together, and despite enduring a shared tragedy in 2018 when their shared California house burned down, they seized the moment and got married in December of that year. Ultimately, Cyrus and Hemsworth got divorced in January of 2020, and it seems like their (likely) final split was hard on Cyrus, who penned the emotional song "Wrecking Ball" — a song that many believe is about Hemsworth. With lyrics like "I came in like a wrecking ball / I never hit so hard in love / All I wanted was to break your walls / All you ever did was wreck me," it seems like this might be the last song Cyrus ever wrote about her ex-husband. (We couldn't resist the joke, but also, her 2020 song "Midnight Sky," according to Billboard, is about her divorce from Hemsworth and the end of other relationships after him.) 

In 2017, Sony rebooted the "Spider-Man" franchise for a whopping third time (before the web-slinging character could be reposessed fully by Marvel Studios, which is an entirely different matter that we won't get into here) and cast two gorgeous performers, Tom Holland and Zendaya, as Peter Parker and a character ominously referred to as "Michelle" in the first installment, "Spider-Man: Homecoming." After Peter briefly dates Liz Toomes (Laura Harrier) in that film — largely because her dad Adrian (Michael Keaton) is secretly the Vulture, that film's antagonist — we learn that Michelle usually goes by MJ, and we can all see where this is going. In the 2019 sequel "Spider-Man: Far From Home," Peter is ready to tell MJ that he's completely in love with her, and the two get together by the end of the movie.

It shouldn't be surprising that Tom Holland and Zendaya ended up getting together as a result of this, but they did ... even if they tried to fool fans at first by simply remaining insanely tight-lipped about their relationship and never commenting about it very much, if at all. Then, in a video clip circulating on the social media platform X in September 2025, Holland corrected an interviewer who called Zendaya his girlfriend, uttering one word: "Fiancée." Considering that Zendaya was already rocking an enormous ring by then and had been doing so since earlier that year, sparking tons of speculation, everybody had already figured it out, but it's good that Holland set the record straight — and it's easy to imagine that Zendaya decided she'd marry this guy after seeing his now infamous performance against her on "Lip Sync Battle."

Kit Harington's Jon Snow might "know nothing," but in real life, Harington was smart enough to lock down the woman who uttered that immortal insult. After Rose Leslie's wildling Ygritte is introduced in the second season of "Game of Thrones" as Jon Snow travels north of the Wall to infiltrate the wildling society on behalf of his "employer" the Night's Watch, it's obvious that Jon, who's sworn to celibacy as a brother of said Night's Watch, is struggling with his vows as the adventurous and bold Ygritte keeps flirting with him (at one point, they literally have to cuddle in the snow for warmth and end up spooning). In Season 3 of the massively popular fantasy series, the two finally act on their urges in the bombshell episode "Kissed by Fire," where Jon shows off a ... particular set of skills that really woos Ygritte. (We won't get into it here. Watch the episode to find out.) Unfortunately, in a battle between the wildlings and the Night's Watch in Season 4, Ygritte is killed by an archer's arrow and dies in Jon's arms.

In real life? Leslie and Harington are going strong as of this writing, but they kept their relationship extremely quiet at first. In Vogue Italy in 2016, though, Harington opened up about falling for his now-wife. ""The country is beautiful, because the Northern Lights are magical, and because it was there that I fell in love," he mused. "If you're already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest in the show, it's becomes very easy to fall in love." As of this writing, Leslie and Harrington are married — with a wedding in 2018, one of their first real admissions that they were together — with two children.